'Beauty before brains makes Mac messy' - Raskin

The Mac is now a mess, according to its original creator, Jef Raskin.

His main complaint? The user interface isn't as simple as it used to be. He notes that at 1,000 pages even Pogue's The Missing Manual is incomplete.

In an interview with The Guardian he also claims: "There is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine."

Raskin believes that what has gone wrong with the Mac is that Apple has focused more on the design of the computer than the interface. He explains: "One only cares about getting something done. Apple has forgotten this key concept. The beautiful packaging is ho-hum and insignificant in the long run."

His vision for the future is a computer interface that you wouldn't even need to think about. He describes "a computer interface that, while not invisible, would not require conscious attention".

Apple was nearly there with the Hypercard which "did not have the properties to make its use unconscious," Raskin admits, but "was wonderful in many ways, and it would have been wise to keep it working on Apple's newer systems".